1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic project management tool. In particular, the present invention relates to an enterprise-wide browser- and platform-independent project management tool which can be accessed over a wide-area network in a non-procedural manner.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In a large corporation, a development project typically involves a number of organizations with varied interests. For example, a software development project may involve one or more programming groups performing development tasks, a customer service group interested in monitoring the project's progress, and a marketing group interested in coordinating the project's progress with release and promotional activities. As these groups and their diverse environments may be located over a large geographical area, the costs of coordinating activities and communicating the relevant information among these groups can be very high.
In recent years, many tools have been developed for resource-sharing on a wide area computer network. In particular, the development of the “World Wide Web” on the Internet led to the development of resource-providing tools (“web server”) and resource-accessing tools (“web browsers”). Typically, an information provider creates a web server with an address known throughout the network. Each web server oversees one or more resources, such as a hypertext file, that users on the wide area network can access using a web browser. A web browser is often a generic client program for communicating with web servers, using a standard protocol such as the “http”—the HyperText Transfer Protocol.
In the state of the art, a web server is also often a generic server program making its resources available through such mechanisms as “CGI1 scripts” and “applets.” A CGI script, which can be written in any programming language, is a platform-specific component that performs resource-specific applications. For example, a web browser can access a search engine by supplying the web server a list of search parameters and the name of the executable program. In this example, the name of the search program can be embedded in a hypertext file, or “web page”. By convention, the executable program is typically stored in a “cgi-bin” directory, and is invoked by the server with an expected list of parameter values. 1 CGI stands for “Common Gateway Interface”.
An applet is an encapsulated program segment which can be executed as a CGI script on the web server, as described above. Alternatively, an applet can also be designed to be transferred from the web server to the web browser to be run in the web browser's environment. One example of a programming language designed for applet applications is the Java programming language, designed and made available by Sun Microsystems, Inc. A Java applet is platform-independent and can be run on the web server or be downloaded from the web server to be run by a Java interpreter residing in the web browser. Thus, using CGI scripts and applets, resources can be shared among participants over a wide area network.
The tools developed for the Internet are now applicable to be used in other wide area computer networks, including those private enterprise-wide computer networks popularly referred to as “intranets”. In such an environment, a tool for tracking development projects accessible by members of geographically diverse organizations are particularly valuable.